The Body
by lenina20
Summary: Post 4x12: When Caroline goes to Elena's house to pick up Kol's body, things don't go as planned -Before going back to couch, she walks to the kitchen to grab two large mugs, fills them with blood from her bag, and pours two long shots of vodka in them. "Here," she says, sitting beside him once again, and taking a long sip for her mug. "My very own version of a killer Bloody Mary"


**a/n: hello guys! I really needed to get this off my chest after the latest episode. I hope you don't hate it. (also: if there is no back door to access Elena's house through the kitchen... I don't particularly care ;)) also, a fair warning: the rating is due to some disturbing imagery concerning Kol's present state.**

**back to WAI now, I promise!**

* * *

"I have to do it, Caroline. You don't understand—"

"Are you crazy? No way! You can't, Tyler, he'll kill you!"

Honestly, she feels like tearing off her hair. How can her friends be this stupid? Killing Kol, running away to freaking Nova Scotia in freaking Canada, and leaving Klaus trapped in the Gilberts' living room. And then, because that wasn't crazy or stupid enough for them, Elena had called_Tyler_. Tyler! Worried that she'd be back to a house reeking of rotting vampire flesh, she'd dared ask him to please take care of Kol's body, which they had left there.

Just there.

Rotting away in the kitchen, right where Klaus could actually see it and smell it and, really—

—Caroline's going to have a heart attack.

They're dead. They're all dead, and it matters _shit_ that Elena will be human again and Stefan will be happy again, and hey, they finally got what they so desperately wanted, right? Well, it makes no difference because now they are _all_ dead. How long are they expecting to survive with Klaus on their tracks?

Seriously?

They're dead, all of them—and stupid Tyler is insisting on being the first one to fall down.

Well—no way in _freaking_ hell.

"No, you don't understand, Care! He killed my mom! He's trapped there, he can't do anything to me—"

"Are you _insane_? He can't do anything to you? Last time I checked, _you_ can't do anything to him. Not only you don't have the white-oak stake, but even if you did, you can't kill Klaus. You'd be killing yourself, you'd be killing all of us! So what are you expecting to accomplish by cornering him, huh?" Damn him, really. He has her screaming, fisted hands raised in outrage, but she can't even care right now. Tyler's being unreasonable, and yeah, she gets that he's hurting, but she will not let him make things worse. She won't allow him. Not this time. "What do you think it's gonna happen if you go there, Ty? You'll get angry, and rightfully so, yes, but you will see red when you see him, and you won't be able to ignore it. You'll lose control. You'll get close, and he will kill before you even know what's happening. Please. _Please_, let me go instead. I can bury Kol myself and—"

"And what, Caroline? You think he won't do anything to you?" Tyler's voice drops to the floor, brows pulled tight. "Have you even seen him after what happened? Have you been with him since the night he killed my mom?"

"What!? Of course I haven't been with him, but I will not—"

"Then you don't know if he wants to hurt you, do you?" Tyler asks, taking a step closer to her. "I know that you have certain assumptions about how he _says_ he feels about you, Care, but I will _not_ let him touch you. After what he did to my mom—"

"Tyler," she says, as firm and calm as she can make her voice sound. She's done screaming and shouting. She's done letting her anger and fear get the best of her. Whether she has any _assumptions_ or not about whether Klaus would want to hurt her—everything has changed now. Kol is dead. They are _all_ dead. Sooner or later, he'll catch up to them. Everything is different now, and she has to make Tyler understand. "This has nothing to do with that. Klaus won't hurt me because I won't give him the chance, I promise. I have no wish to confront him, and you—you're hurt, Tyler, and I understand that. But you have to understand, he is hurt, too. He just saw his brother die right in front of him, and he couldn't do anything to stop it. That kind of powerlessness—I cannot imagine what it may do to someone like Klaus, but I know that if you go there, and you see him, you won't be able to stop yourself from wanting to hurt him for what he did to you. And then, he'll take it out on you, and I will have _two_ bodies to pick up from the floor while he watches me do it. I will not—I cannot let that happen."

It's really not up for debate.

Without even looking at Tyler, she gets her purse from the chair she left it on when she entered his house, and turns to the front door, ready to do what needs to be done.

"Caroline—"

But she turns to him again—one last time, she promises to herself. "We have to be clever about this, Tyler. What you did to him—what you did for the hybrids" she corrects herself quickly, before Tyler even has the time to scowl, "it really pissed him off, but Jeremy and Elena… they killed his brother. We can't give him a reason to take it out on us, we just can't. Not this time. Now his need for revenge is focused on them, and I—I don't want him to hurt you more than he already has."

It's so unfair, she knows. Letting her friends take the bullet. But they killed his brother, and they knew perfectly well what they were getting themselves into. They knew there would be repercussions, just as Tyler knew it when he staged the hybrids' coup against Klaus. She hadn't been able to bring herself to stop Tyler that time, as hard and badly as she had wanted to. This time, however, she hadn't even known what Elena, Stefan and the rest of them had planned against Kol. She's absolutely helpless in this—she's always been, she knows; but she will _not_ let Tyler pay the price for this one fuck-up.

He already paid his due to Klaus's vengeful rage.

Enough is fucking enough.

But it's obvious in Tyler's wounded expression that he doesn't agree. Caroline braces herself for the impact, watching attentively as his back straightens and his whole body moves away from her, unconsciously but very obviously repulsed. "_Clever_?" he hisses, his voice so low she almost doesn't recognize it. "You want me to be _clever_ and pretend that Klaus never drowned my mother in the town's fountain, in the hope that he forgets about me now that he has bigger fish to fry? What is _wrong_ with you, Caroline? I am _not_ afraid of Klaus and if you think even for a second that I—"

"Shut _up_! Shut up shut up shut up shut up!" She turns away and opens the front door and doesn't move at all; doesn't turn around until she feels his hand tentative on her shoulder, and her whole body collapses in a dry sob beneath the cold familiar weight. "Please, Tyler, please. I'm begging you. You may not be afraid of him, but I am." She's not. She's not afraid of Klaus as much she is afraid _for_ Tyler. If he goes there—he's committing suicide. So she begs, "Please, let me do this. Please. Please, don't make me bury you too."

_Please._

The disgust hasn't complete effaced from his gaze when she opens her eyes to look at him, but his eyes soften as he swallows and moves his hand away. "I can't keep you away," he mutters, defeated. "I will never be able to keep you away from him."

Caroline doesn't understand—

—but she leaves anyway, and is unable to bring herself to look back again.

* * *

The smell of charred flesh sends a wave of nausea up her throat, and she has to clasp her hand over her mouth to keep herself from being sick in Elena's sink. Her stomach rolls up and down, her throat constricting around a mouthful of bile that brings tears to her eyes, but she forces herself to keep her back straight, her head held high and her breathing steady and superficial as she moves towards the burnt body lying on the kitchen's floor.

"Don't worry, you stop noticing the smell of rotten flesh after just a few minutes. But I'd advise you to wait until you feel better to start desecrating my brother's corpse."

Her back is turned to him, and she wishes she could take a deep breath to calm her nerves before turning around to look at him, but she knows that inhaling the kitchen's putrid air will only make her retch, and this time she won't be able to stop. She will vomit right in front of him, over the dead body of his brother. It's not like she thought she could just enter through the back door, steal the body away and have him not even notice her presence, but whatever is bound to happen now, she isn't going to make it worse. She isn't here to desecrate the remains of his brother—Kol was human, once, and the formless mass of burnt flesh on the floor is what now lingers of the innocent careless boy he once was.

"Body disposal doesn't become you, Caroline. You look sick."

His voice comes out strangely dead; emotionless. His stare is blank and empty. _He_ looks sick. Lifeless. Impassive. And yet she can tell by his swollen lids that he's been crying; trapped for over twenty hours in the house of the people who just killed his brother, staring at the parts of the burnt corpse he can see—just the legs sticking out from behind the kitchen isle. Smelling each moment of the process of putrefaction.

Caroline feels like crying, too. Is this how it ends for all of them?

Elena wants to be human again; she's been given the chance that Caroline never had. And is this the price they are supposed to pay? Dying like this—rightfully in the hands of a big bad monster with a broken heart.

She blinks back her tears and fidgets with her hands. "What do you want me do with him?"

It's the least she can do. She won't make it worse by running away with his dead brother through the back door and burying him in some nameless hole in the ground in the middle of the woods. She has no doubts that Klaus would find him anyway, take him wherever he wants to—but she won't do it. She can't. She doesn't want to.

Leaning against the back of the couch, Klaus crosses his arms over his chest and looks at her so intensely that she is sure he can cut her skin open with just his eyes. That'd at least explain the pain rippling through her chest when his voice breaks around the words, "Just leave. Let him be. Your friends won't mind the smell much once I've burned down their house."

She shakes her head furiously, but keeps her eyes locked on his. No, she can't do that either. It's not the smell—she isn't naïve enough to believe that her friends can ever go home again, after this. But she will not—she cannot just leave him there with Klaus. She cannot let Klaus stay here, trapped in Elena's house with the dead body of his brother, the rot of Kol's flesh infecting whatever humanity remains in Klaus's own rotting heart. It would only make it so much worse—for them, and for him. She cannot imagine that pain, that torture. Elena got to bury Jenna. Tyler got to bury his mom. She will not leave Kol to decompose right where Klaus can see it happen.

"I can't," she finally says, taking one step closer to Klaus—one step further away from Kol's body. "You can't ask me to leave you here with him. It's not—I just can't."

His eyes remain cold and dead. "I appreciate your concern, Caroline, but you're very mistaken if you think I can't handle it. _I_ will lay my brother to rest, I at least owe him that." His hard stare doesn't quiver, but once again his voice hitches, and Caroline feels the crack in her own heart when he gulps down the pain, his teeth clenching like he's begging her, "Can I please ask you to not take that away from me? Can you let _me_ bury my brother?"

She stands there immobile, and doesn't say a word when he turns away from her. If he's crying, he doesn't want her to see, and she is glad. She doesn't want to see it either. But—she also doesn't want to leave. She doesn't want to leave him there alone with the only company of his putrefying brother. She can't.

If only there was a way that he could—

The idea strikes her like a bolt of lightening, and even though she doesn't dare smile, she feels as if a heavy load has been lifted off her chest. "You still have the coffins in your house, right?"

He turns to her, brows wrinkled in confusion. It's such a nice deviation from the grief and rage that Caroline wants to pay him back with a smile, but she recognizes it's far too soon for that. So she elaborates, "I can go over there and bring Kol's here—I can put it in the living room with you, if you want. You can lay him to rest, and you can say goodbye. I'll leave him here with you, if you want me to. Or, I'll take him to your house, or wherever you tell me to."

It's an enthralling sight—the way his face changes from lifeless and ashen to awestruck with wonder. He barely moves a muscle in his body, still standing rigid and alert in the middle of Elena's living room like a caged animal, but his face softens as he takes her in, as if only now he is fully realizing that she is there with him. That she wants to help ease off the pain, for a reason neither he nor she can even come close to understanding. But it's true, and it's real, and it's what makes him breathe again.

It's what makes her turn around and flash away before he can tell her to just leave him alone to his sorrow and his ghosts.

* * *

She waits on the backyard.

It's already dark and she doesn't really know what to do with herself—doesn't know if she should expect him to call her inside when he's done. If he will ask her to take Kol away, or if nothing will happen and she will have to make the call to go back inside through the back door of Elena's kitchen and risk intruding Klaus's privacy to check that no, he doesn't want her to take his brother away, so he'll be spending the three remaining days on his cage with the company of the coffin he once used as punishment for his brother for over one hundred years.

Make it like he actually believes in penance.

But then he whispers, only loud enough so that her heightened senses can hear him, "You can come in."

So she does, grabbing two blood bags from Elena's fridge on her way to the living room, and picking up her phone to text Tyler before sitting by Klaus's side on the couch. _It's done_, she types, one-handed while she hands a blood bag to him. _I'm going home to take a dozen showers. See you tomorrow._

He takes it with a raised eyebrow, and Caroline offers him a plastered smile that keeps her eyes off the coffin resting on the coffee table for a second or two. This is Kol's wake, she realizes, and, as she does, she stands to get the bottle of vodka hidden in the secret stash that Elena keeps behind the biography section in her bookshelf. Klaus's other eyebrow rises in appreciation, and this time the plaster around Caroline's fake smile crumbles, and her little grin twitches genuinely. Before going back to couch, she walks to the kitchen to grab two large mugs, fills them with blood from her bag, and pours two long shots of vodka in them.

"Here," she says, sitting beside him once again, and taking a long sip for her mug. "My very own version of a killer Bloody Mary."

It's like a regular Bloody Mary, except it has no Worchester sauce or lemon juice in it. No pepper or salt, either. And actual blood instead of tomato juice. It's really yummy, and it earns her a smile, an _actual_ smile—so fuck it, maybe she can make a living out of organizing wakes. It's a different kind of party to the ones she usually likes to plan, but a kind she figures will match a lot better with her morbid lifestyle. It's not like she hasn't gotten a lot of practice lately. Grief-stricken hybrids are starting to become a bad habit of hers.

Klaus downs the whole mug in own long gulp, and Caroline actually frowns, because that's a lot less refined that he has her used to. "It's good," he admits, and she's ready to smile again when he adds, nonchalant as if they were making small-talk in some bar, "but I hope you know that I'm still killing your friends. I appreciate you keeping me company and preparing cute blood-based and mug-contained cocktails for me, love, but you can tell your friends that, as lovely as you are, chatting me up isn't going to work out this time."

Well, at least he called her 'love'.

Honestly? The cold dead tone of his voice curling around her name was beginning to get on her nerves, so she'll take whatever small victory she can get. It makes it remarkably easier to remain indifferent to his accusations as she cooks up a second round of his bloody Bloody Mary. "Well," she shrugs, "my friends have no idea I'm here, so it'd be silly of me to worry them now, wouldn't it? They called Tyler and asked him to come and take Kol away because apparently, that's how Elena's guilty conscience manifests now—she can't stomach the thought that the evidence of what she did will be here waiting for her when she gets back home."

He takes the mug from her, fingers brushing, eyes narrowing. "So why are you here?"

She pulls her hand away slowly, keeping it from shaking just out of sheer strength of will as she tries to think of an honest answer she can give him. Will he be satisfied with, _I don't really know_? "I couldn't let Tyler come," she admits, reluctant to give him a more detailed explanation than it's really necessary. "You and me both know how that would have ended."

He nods, not pressing her further. "Well, I'm glad you're here but, I feel I must insist. Nothing you can do or say is going to save your friends."

"I know." She knows. It's not that she doesn't care, of course she cares, but still—

"You understand that I have to do it, right?"

Does she? She takes the mug to her lips to hide the moment of doubt clouding her better judgment. His tone sounds… strange. Hesitant. Like he's genuinely asking her whether she understands why he is going to murder her friends. Like he's actually expecting some part of her to be okay with it. How can he think that she—? She turns on the couch to face him, lifting her leg so she's sitting on her ankle and resting the mug on her knee. She lets her eyes open wide and honest to his inquisitive gaze, and then she asks. "Do you? Really? Kol compelled Damon to kill Jeremy. Your brother was trying to get Elena's little brother killed, so Elena found a way kill him to protect her own family."

"Is that what you think?" His forehead wrinkles, like he's truly puzzled by her assessment. Caroline frowns back, and Klaus shakes his head. "They could have daggered Kol, which is what I thought was Stefan's plan. That would have stopped him from sabotaging our attempts to find the cure and would have freed Damon from his compulsion. Win-win, right?" His eyes are suddenly sparkling, and it may be malice or residual tears, but Caroline shudders all the same, anticipating what he is going to say next. He smiles, and it looks impossibly sad. "Except for the little detail of Jeremy's mark not growing, of course. Well, I must admit that if we weren't talking about the death of my baby brother here, I'd be impressed. It really was terrifyingly cold-hearted of Elena to orchestrate the killing of Heaven only knows how many thousands of vampires for a reason as pragmatic as simply speeding up the quest for a cure she only wants for selfish reasons."

Yeah, well—

Caroline can't say anything to that. Whatever legitimate reasons Elena had for killing Kol, who wouldn't have stopped anywhere short of killing them all to keep them away from Silas' grave—the true motive behind Kol's death was not to protect Jeremy, or even to set Damon free. The reason that justified killing Kol was that his death would be followed by the deaths of tens of thousands of vampires—_so Jeremy's mark could grow_.

"You should think for a minute or two about those vampires who died yesterday, love." His voice is softer now; more familiar, haunting like the memories of him that sometimes keep her away at night. "They killed my brother, and I honestly couldn't care less about whoever else gets pulled down in the aftermath, but don't you think that your friend Elena should care? Vampires like you, Caroline, who never hurt anyone unless by accident. Vampires like the Salvatores, who I am sure someone in the world loved as much as Elena loves them. Vampires who had friends and families, like you and your friends do. Vampires like the Bennett witch, collateral damage in the war to protect Elena's humanity, who were only now adjusting to their new life. Vampires like Stefan's feisty friend—Lexi, wasn't she?—whose only purpose in life was to save as many souls as—"

"Stop!" Her eyes squeezes shut and she raises her hand to just, _please_, beg him to stop. "Stop! Please, Klaus, stop!"

She opens her eyes to his fingers entwined with hers as he sets her hand back around her mug, and meets her gaze with a genuinely concerned expression in his eyes. "I'm sorry," he whispers, "I didn't mean—"

She shakes her head and gulps down the second-hand grief clotted in her throat. It's hardly his fault, after all. She can't be thankful that he is trying to get a point across that she truly doesn't want to get, but Elena's crimes are for Elena to atone for. So following his unvoiced advice she takes the mug to her mouth and takes a long, satisfying drink before leaning back against the arm rest of the couch. Klaus smiles at her, and then he looks away, opening and closing his mouth as if debating whether to say or not whatever's on his mind. It makes her feel more curious than apprehensive, for some reason, so she urges him on, her foot tapping his knee.

"What?" she asks, her lips tugging at the corners of her mouth when his eyes follow the path of her bent-up leg to settle questioningly on her face.

He doesn't smile, but his eyes open, and they look greener than they did only a few minutes before. "I had the weirdest conversation with Damon yesterday," he finally says, his fingers drumming nervously on his mug. "It was about you."

Her brows shoot up to her hairline, and even though she doesn't want to, her whole body clenches. She swallows down a flinch, as every time that certain memories assault her. She doesn't want to go there, not ever, but most especially not with a barely-sane-enough-to-repress-his-homicidal-urges-for-a-few-minutes-more Klaus sitting only a few feet away from her. Still, she can't keep the trembling off her voice when she asks, "What about me?"

Klaus looks slightly taken aback by her reaction, but he also seems preoccupied with something else—something mysterious and fascinating that seems to be hiding at the bottom of his bloody Bloody Mary, judging by the way his eyes get lost in the beverage. "Well," he drawls, prolonging each sound like it physically pains him to talk, "I supposed I was curious about why Elena was so willing to forgive him after all the bad things he's done."

"Yeah," Caroline nods, "you and me both."

True fact. She has been torturing herself with the same question over and over again. How can Elena have forgotten every horrible thing that Damon has done to her and her friends over the years? She can't get her head around it, and now—now that Klaus has told her that he and Damon talked about it—she feels nauseated, again. She doesn't want to think about it. She doesn't want to—but if Damon and Klaus talked about what Damon did, what Elena has seemingly forgotten about, then that means that Klaus knows. He knows what Damon did to her, and she is over it, okay? She is, but that doesn't mean that she's comfortable with Klaus knowing, or worse, willing to talk to him about it.

She keeps her eyes away and wishes she could disappear. She tries to think of an excuse to leave, even though she really doesn't need one. She shakes and shudders and clenches her eyes shut again, hoping the world will go away if she doesn't have to see it and then—

—then Klaus speaks again. "I admit it was a new low for me, going to Damon Salvatore of all people for advice. But, I also must admit, you have me reeling here, love. It's rather pathetic of me."

Confused, and yet relieved, she opens her eyes to see that he's still looking down at his mug, all enamored and enthralled. It only puzzles her further, that he's still not looking at her. She'd thought that, talking about Damon, and the things that went on between them—that it made him uncomfortable. That maybe it even disgusted him a little. But somehow that intuition doesn't match his words at all. He went to Damon for… advice? Because she has him… reeling?

Umm… what?

"I'm not following," she says, quietly and timidly, somehow wary of his reaction.

He seems annoyed when he finally looks up at her, huffing and all indignant, like she's being obtuse on purpose. Which she isn't being. "If I may ask, what is that confuses you, sweetheart? I think I've been very frank and direct about my intentions, haven't I? I am a grown man, Caroline. I don't play games."

"Oh-kay," she concedes, still uneasy, still frowning. She's still not getting the whole of it, but she has her suspicions about where the conversation is heading to, and she doesn't really want to talk about _that_. Not with the deceased body of his brother present there in the room with them, and not when Damon has found a typically-Damon worm-like way to creep into the equation.

No way.

"But I was wrong, you know?" And just like that, all of a sudden, Klaus visibly relaxes. Whatever mystery was hiding at the bottom of his mug gets thrown to the back of his throat when he finishes his drink, bloodstained lips curling around a confident smile. "It isn't about forgiveness. It has nothing to do with that, actually. It's obvious after what she did yesterday that Elena doesn't need to forgive Damon in order to be able to love him. He was right all along, I suppose. She is the same as him—maybe she's even worse. But that doesn't matter either because—"

"Elena is not the same as Damon. You don't know what you're—"

"It doesn't matter, love, don't you see? She loved him before she turned, just like you love her now in spite of what she did yesterday. She loved Stefan enough to choose him even though he forced her to drink his blood and then threatened to throw her off the Wickery Bridge—and he would have done it, believe me." He's genuinely smiling now, like for a moment he's actually forgotten the dead body lying only a few feet away. "In the end she went down that bridge anyway, and it was Rebekah's doing, but that doesn't keep Stefan from having feelings for my sister, regardless of what he says."

Caroline can't even keep up. Damon, Elena, Stefan, Rebekah—whatever, it's not like she cares about that romantic quadrangle right now. What irks here though, is why the hell it is so important to Klaus? She literally doesn't have a clue what he's talking about, and she's starting to think maybe Elena's blood had gone bad or something, because there is no way Klaus is either drunk or high on sterilized bagged blood after just two mugs. Yet he keeps on going, and Caroline just lets him ramble while she nods and pretends that she understands what he's saying, that is—until his eyes focus again, and his smile sharpens dangerously.

"—and that is why you're here tonight, even though I killed Carol Lockwood."

After the rant about love and forgiveness and whatnot, the silence that follows his final assessment is deafening. Or maybe it only feels like that for Caroline because she can't believe he actually went there. She's so sincerely stunned that she doesn't feel any anger, any resentment. "I'm sorry," she deadpans, "why is that?"

His smirk doesn't even tremble. "You're here because you _want_ to be here, and whatever the reason for that is, what I did—what I _do_—it won't change it."

Realization hits her gradually. First, she gets the part about the advice: apparently, Klaus had asked Damon about what he'd done to get Elena to forgive him, in hopes that he could make Caroline forgive him too, for killing Tyler's mom. It's a hard one to process—not only that he had expected her to actually forgive him, but that he had wanted it so badly that he had gone to Damon of all people to ask for advice on how to get in Caroline's good graces. But then, he had figured it out: it wasn't about forgiving. Sometimes, you simply can't stop feeling the way you feel about someone regardless of what they do. Easy as that.

She feels like giving him a medal, for passing the Introduction to Basic Human Emotions class.

Except—and here's the funny part—now he's assuming things about the way _she_ feels about him. Which she simply can't have him doing. It seems awfully convenient, doesn't it? That he's threatening to murder all of her friends while simultaneously holding over her head these… _things_ that she feels and that she has no control over and doesn't really know what to with them. Or how to cope with it. How far down she needs to bury her unwanted feelings to keep them from surfacing at the very least expected moment, forcing her to help him give an honest burial to his psychopathic murderous brother, because if she can't at least take away the edge of _his_ pain, then it hurts _her_ to breathe.

She sighs and leans back against the couch, stretching her legs to shamelessly rest them on his lap. His eyes widen and she mocks his legitimate shock with a sarcastic smile, unfazed when he crosses his arms over her legs and curls a hand around her naked calf. "I take it that this is your way of asking for preemptive forgiveness for hunting down and killing my friends, isn't it?" she fake-smiles, "Well, I guess I don't need to tell you where you can shove it."

"Sweetheart—"

"No, don't 'sweetheart' me, you jackass." She underlines her frustration with a kick on his arm. "What's the plan, huh? You kill my friends and then we go to a holiday resort? You think that's gonna work? How dumb do you think I am?"

She kicks him again, and this time she has no trouble following the path of his eyes moving hungrily up her legs. His mouth opens silently, but he recovers quickly. "I honestly don't understand what you're trying to achieve by flashing your underwear at me. I'm getting mixed signals here, love."

She glowers, moving her legs away and sitting on her knees. "The next one's kicking out your teeth."

He smirks, dangerous and gorgeous. "Is that a promise?"

She ignores him, shuffling on her knees to move further away from him. "I'm serious, okay? You say you have to kill my friends and I guess they already know that, so I'm sure they're coming up with some fancy expression spell that gets you off the game without killing the rest of us, probably finding a way to force the cure on you—so that is what's gonna happen in three days. You attack them, they counter-attack you, and I guess I do my best to not get hurt in the crossfire. But I am actually curious," she hisses, angry, eyes narrowed to make it obvious that she's dead serious. "What is your endgame here?"

Unimpressed, Klaus only shrugs. "I hunt them down and kill them, and then I leave."

"You leave?"

"I leave," he nods, eyes small and dark and intense, never letting go of hers. "I'll be out of your life after the new moon, don't worry, Caroline. I'm not a bloody moron. I _have_ to kill your friends for what they've done to my family. I'm not expecting you to be okay with that. I won't hurt you, but I _will_ leave you."

"But you think that killing my friends won't change the way I feel about you."

It's not a question; it's what he said. It's also not an admission of any kind. It's simply what he said.

"Not essentially, no," he says, his voice relaxed and steady. "But you'll need to get over the pain and the anger, years or decades—as long as you need. I'm confident you'll find me when you're ready."

Cocky much?

"Well, your plan sucks." She says it as she feels it, and doesn't think twice it before she adds, "I have a better one."

He arches an eyebrow in interest, but is quick to diminish her with a scoff. "You do?"

Caroline nods. She does have a better plan. It's a crazy one, she knows; and yet she doesn't hesitate. "Let's say we wait out the new moon and, you _don't_ kill my friends. You just leave, and I—I go with you."

She feels him tense even if nothing in his calm demeanor gives it away. It's the craziest thing she's said in her life—certainly the craziest thing she's ever done, but she's never been more certain of anything ever before. She simply hates his plan. It's that simple. She will not let him kill her friends and just do nothing about it. She will not sit on her hands and wait for her friends to come up with a way to either kill him or piss him off further than he's already pissed. She will not wait out this war. And she most certainly will not let him just leave her—expecting her to go find him someday. She cannot even phantom the thought—

—what if he's right? What if the future unfolds just like he's predicting. It's crazy, and insane. She won't ever forgive him, won't ever be able to look at him again if he kills _any_ of her friends. She won't. And yet that thought—it's almost as terrifying as the alternative.

She has no choice but this.

He shakes his head and leans away. "No," he says, and the lonely word sounds like a command she cannot disobey without facing a terrible punishment. She doesn't care. She won't back down. He notices her determination, so he adds, "I will not take you with me against your will, Caroline. In case this isn't obvious, I would have done that a long time ago if that was what I wanted," he pauses, his eyes softening as he looks right into her. "It isn't."

She knows that. It's not that she doesn't want—

"I like you."

He's a monster—he's the biggest monster she will ever know.

She _likes_ him.

"You like me?"

Caroline nods, slowly, desperately hoping against all hope that the right words will come to her mouth now that she truly needs them. With a small smile and a loud sigh, she starts speaking: "I do," she says, hands fidgeting with the hem of her pretty dress. "You killed my boyfriend's mom only a few weeks ago, and here I am. Off the top of my head, I can't think of any other place I'd rather be at this particular moment, or why maybe I should _not_ be here with you. Tyler thinks I'm home, and no one else even knew I was coming here. Still, I don't want to leave." She breathes. In. Out. In. Out. "I don't really wanna go home right now."

His eyes close, and he pinches the bridge of his nose. "You don't know what you're saying."

"Yes, I do!" Yes, she does. "You seem pretty confident that that is where the story ends, right? You and me? Well, then why wait, when waiting means you raging war against my friends and my hometown, and me hating you for decades until I'm okay again with fact that I actually _don't_hate you?"

His eyes move to the coffin lying just there in front of them. So close that Klaus could bump his knees into it and knock it down on the floor if only he leaned forward a few inches. He doesn't tear his eyes off it when he asks her, "Are you suggesting that I let Kol's death go, just like that? That I leave my brother unavenged?"

When he puts it like that—well—

"I'm saying—" _What_ is she saying? "I'm saying—not _now_. I'm saying that, I am not ready for you to kill my friends and me to be okay with it. I'm also saying that I am not ready for my friends to hurt you, and me to _not_ be okay with that. So please, let's just—let's just go."

His eyes rivet her and she feels like he's peeling off layers of her, baring her soul and all of its secrets to his unforgiving stare. "Do you have any idea of what you are offering, love? There is no going back from this. Not ever. So if this is a trick to get me to back off your friends—"

"—it's not." It's not. Not _ever_, he's said. Caroline knows that already. She needs him to know that she knows. "Just, think about it. What do you_want_, Klaus?"

If he truly wants her—

Her heart is pounding madly, waiting for an answer; it's beating dead and yet so furious that she feels it hammering against her ribs, threatening to break free from her chest. Klaus lets the seconds run them by; doesn't say anything, but he really doesn't need to. Holding his eyes in hers for a short while, she cradles the smile that splits up his face—at last.

"You have three days to change your mind," he says.

She nods, biting back a smile and letting out the breath stuck in her throat as she reaches for the unopened blood bag and the bottle Vodka for a celebratory third round of bloody Bloody Mary's.

It's pointless, the period of grace he's offering.

She's not going to change her mind.

~  
.end

* * *

**thank you so much for reading as always! please, drop me a line if you have any comments! **


End file.
